Archive for February, 2013

One of the defining features of hurricane Sandy has been the difficulty that some have found in understanding their loss experience from the storm. Industry loss estimates have risen steadily ever since the superstorm struck the U.S. northeast in October and latest estimates range from PCS’ reported industry loss estimate of $18.75 billion up to […]

Global insurance and reinsurance group Alterra Capital announced its fourth-quarter and full-year 2012 results yesterday and gave some insight into the contribution that its collateralized reinsurance and retrocession sidecars bring to the groups income. Alterra had two sidecars in operation in 2012, New Point IV which was formed in 2011 and the more recent New […]

U.S. health insurer Aetna, which has a number of catastrophe bond like medical benefit linked securitizations providing it with reinsurance protection, has been hit hard by the influenza outbreak in the United States this winter. The U.S. flu outbreak now appears to have peaked, but the higher than normal incidence of flu this season has […]

Here’s an interesting twist in the world of collateralized and capital market backed reinsurance business as the largest investment manager in the ILS sector Nephila Capital becomes active in the Lloyd’s reinsurance market by backing a new syndicate. Announced this morning, the Lloyd’s Franchise Board has granted “in principle” approval for Asta Managing Agency Ltd. […]

Making the news today is another large and interesting reinsurance transaction involving Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. which sees the firm taking on variable annuity risks and as a result assume some exposure to mortality and longevity risks. In a reinsurance deal worth $2.2 billion, Berkshire Hathaway will reinsure the risks associated with $4 billion of […]

A report published last week by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) discusses the need for robust natural disaster risk financing solutions to be employed in the Asia-Pacific region to strengthen its disaster resilience. The report says that natural disaster losses have risen more quickly than Asia-Pacific’s economy has expanded. At the same time insurance penetration […]

It’s time for another of our regular looks at the Swiss Re Cat Bond Performance Indices, to see what they can tell us about pricing and returns in the secondary market for catastrophe bonds and the markets general sentiment. When we last looked a fortnight ago gains for both indices had slowed in the new […]

Bermuda based insurance and reinsurance group Validus Holdings announced 2012 full year net income of $408.4m and a fourth-quarter 2012 net loss of $90.7m last Thursday. The group held an earnings call and some interesting comments on the growing third-party and institutional capital management side of its business were discussed. It’s clear that Validus see […]

The primary catastrophe bond issuance market remains quiet, which is a little unusual for the time of year, but private cat bond Skyline Re has closed, upsized and achieved attractive pricing. As always, you can read every market news story and article on the Artemis news blog, subscribe to our weekly email newsletter update and […]

The DCG Iris insurance-linked securities fund, operated by investment manager Dexion Capital, will soon have the 11.025m £1 Sterling C Shares it recently issued converted back into Ordinary Shares, now that it has a much clearer picture of the potential for losses caused by hurricane Sandy. The reason the C Shares were created in the […]